I remember Silvertone (Sears' "house brand") products, and every TV
repair guy in town hated them!  Why?  Because in order to cut produc-
tion costs, the manufacturer modified standard circuits.  The mantra in
commercial production is "minimum parts count."

So to achieve this, many standard parts and circuit configurations were
modified to reduce part counts.  The manufacturers used special-produc-
tion-run, non-standard parts.  This was fine, until one of those non-
standard parts failed.  Then you either had to go to Sears to get them,
hoping they were still in stock and that the production run of oddball
parts was adequate to support your repair needs, or otherwise ... ???

Harvey Chao